Voting is Not Enough

Page 41
Q-News, Issue 362
April 2005

Having just been through a vicious political season, American Muslims know a thing or two about tactics, strategy and getting out the vote. Although there is a sense of urgency to Muslim political involvement in both Britain and the United States, Svend White advises caution. Political activism, he says, has stark limitations in the absence of other types of civic engagement. 

It is exciting to see the genie of Muslim American political activism steadily seeping out of its long, self-imposed bottle.  Voting and “getting involved” are on the top of the agenda in the community today, and an array of Muslim organisations and civic groups are making impressive inroads in Washington, injecting fresh new perspectives into policy discussions, working to give the Muslim community the political influence its size and growth rates warrant, and fighting to make sure that American Muslims are afforded the same civil rights enjoyed by all.   

Still, if there is one thing that America’s often depressing post-9/11 political odyssey has revealed to me about legal process and the law itself, it is that the enforcement of laws and the implementation of government policies depend on an informal, and generally unspoken, consensus within society. This consensus, which is always in flux, is at least as important in the long run - and perhaps considerably more so - as legal and political developments. It’s the discursive backdrop in which government and broader society applies (or does not apply, as the case may be) its formal values.

In the US, the power of that consensus to blind the public to the threat posed by gross miscarriages of justice, dangerously misguided policies, government-sanctioned discrimination, and even assaults on the rule of law itself has been on conspicuous display in the mainstream media for years. The Neo-Con arguments for (re)invading Iraq are no weaker to experts now than in January 2002, when Bush unveiled his “axis of evil” mother-of-all-bromides and dissembled about “the world’s most dangerous regimes…threaten[ing] us with the world’s most destructive weapons”, yet the mainstream media uncritically swallowed Bush’s vague, cliché-ridden rationalisations and enthusiastically enlisted to promote a war whose rationale has yet to be articulated by its architects with clarity even today, nearly two years after the end to “major combat operations” was declared.  

Similarly, a media establishment that forcefully speaks out against relatively mild forms of race based discrimination (e.g., the “driving while black” controversies concerning higher traffic citation rates for African American drivers than whites) has given scant attention to the ongoing civil rights crisis for Muslims and Arabs in America. When it has paid fleeting attention to the issue, its analysis has almost always accepted the Bush administration’s transparent rationalisations for its radical departures from legal precedent as well as common sense.

These oversights are not the result of some fell conspiracy, but rather of a nervous consensus or at least a nagging suspicion among many non-Muslims, nurtured by sensationalistic media coverage, that Islam and Muslims present a unique new threat to the status quo that justifies extraordinary and extreme measures.  Arab American cultural critic Jack Shaheen has ably documented how Hollywood systematically dehumanises Muslims and undermines any assumption of Muslims and non-Muslims having shared values and experiences. Islam is seen as so red in the tooth and claw and so very alien that the old rules are assumed to no longer apply for Muslims. The slippery slope of Muslim exceptionalism leads inexorably to secret evidence, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other outrages against the American way.  

The only way to change the unhealthy dynamic of fear and misunderstanding between Muslim and non-Muslim is to forge a new consensus in society by dint of dialogue, friendship, and day-to-day participation by Muslims in the civic life of their communities at all levels. Democracy is, or should be, a year-round pursuit, and in most cases there is nothing to prevent more of us from getting involved and demonstrating that we are equally invested in the welfare of our communities and nation. Press conferences, rallies, and letters to the editor have their place, but they are not likely to plant the seeds of a new paradigm - they need to be part of a holistic and heartfelt program of engagement in society. We should get involved not because it’s good PR, though, but because this is at the heart of our faith.

Shelley noted famously that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of humanity. The frenzied hubbub and bloodless certainties of our day are highly inimical to the poet’s calling - poetry, like remembrance of Allah, runs counter to the “natural” rhythm of contemporary life - but our era is characterized nonetheless by a bewildering profusion of lesser, often prosaic “poets” who collectively have a massive impact on the world.  Whether or not we (or they) realise it, producers of popular culture and debate such as journalists, actors, singers, film directors, advertising executives, and others shape the ethical consensus within which society operates. For all too many of us, they determine our views of morality, the world, our neighbors, and even ourselves. And their influence is only growing as the modern mass media relentlessly eclipse previous sources of knowledge and edification in our busy lives.  

We certainly need activists, but I think we will need Muslim poets, substitute teachers, and soup kitchen volunteers even more in the long run. As we mobilize politically, we would do well to pause and reflect on the multiplicity of ways we can reach out to our neighbors and make our communities better. There’s a lot more to getting involved than voting.